Johnson, Preface to the
Dictionary

From Samuel Johnson,A Dictionary of the English Language
(London, 1755)

The text comes from that of the first edition of the
Dictionary (1755). I've added paragraph numbers but
omitted the long footnote on Junius. I'd like to express my
gratitude to Daisuke Nagashima, who provided valuable
corrections. Please let me know of any remaining transcription
errors.

[1] It is the fate of those who toil
at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear
of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to
censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage,
or punished for neglect, where success would have been without
applause, and diligence without reward.

[2] Among these unhappy mortals is
the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as
the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature,
doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the
paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and
glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that
facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to
praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and
even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very
few.

[3] I have, notwithstanding this
discouragement, attempted a dictionary of the English
language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of
every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected,
suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild
exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and
exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of
innovation.

[4] When I took the first survey of
my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order, and
energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was
perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated;
choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any
established principle of selection; adulterations were to be
detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of
expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of
any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged
authority.

[5] Having therefore no assistance
but from general grammar, I applied myself to the perusal of our
writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or
illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials
of a dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced to method,
establishing to myself, in the progress of the work, such rules
as experience and analogy suggested to me; experience, which
practice and observation were continually increasing; and
analogy, which, though in some words obscure, was evident in
others.

[6] In adjusting the Orthography, which has been to this time
unsettled and fortuitous, I found it necessary to distinguish
those irregularities that are inherent in our tongue, and perhaps
coeval with it, from others which the ignorance or negligence of
later writers has produced. Every language has its anomalies,
which, though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary,
must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and
which require only to be registred; that they may not be
increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but
every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities,
which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or
proscribe.

[7] As language was at its beginning
merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken
before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any
visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we
now observe those who cannot read to catch sounds imperfectly,
and utter them negligently. When this wild and barbarous jargon
was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavoured to
express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to
pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as
were already vitiated in speech. The powers of the letters, when
they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and
unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same
sound by different combinations.

[8] From this uncertain pronunciation
arise in a great part the various dialects of the same country,
which will always be observed to grow fewer, and less different,
as books are multiplied; and from this arbitrary representation
of sounds by letters, proceeds that diversity of spelling
observable in the Saxon remains, and I suppose in the
first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy,
and produces anomalous formations, which, being once
incorporated, can never be afterward dismissed or reformed.

[9] Of this kind are the derivatives
length from long, strength from
strong, darling from dear,
breadth from broad, from dry,
drought, and from high, height, which
Milton, in zeal for analogy, writes highth;
Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una; to change
all would be too much, and to change one is nothing.

[10] This uncertainty is most
frequent in the vowels, which are so capriciously pronounced, and
so differently modified, by accident or affectation, not only in
every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well
known to etymologists, little regard is to be shewn in the
deduction of one language from another.

[11] Such defects are not errours in
orthography, but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the
English language, that criticism can never wash them
away; these, therefore, must be permitted to remain untouched:
but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or
depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has
been weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously
written, as authours differ in their care or skill: of these it
was proper to enquire the true orthography, which I have always
considered as depending on their derivation, and have therefore
referred them to their original languages: thus I write
enchant, enchantment, enchanter, after the
French, and incantation after the
Latin; thus entire is chosen rather than
intire, because it passed to us not from the
Latininteger, but from the Frenchentier.

[12] Of many words it is difficult to
say whether they were immediately received from the
Latin or the French, since at the time when we
had dominions in France, we had Latin service
in our churches. It is, however, my opinion, that the
French generally supplied us; for we have few
Latin words, among the terms of domestick use, which are
not French; but many French, which are very
remote from Latin.

[13] Even in words of which the
derivation is apparent, I have been often obliged to sacrifice
uniformity to custom; thus I write, in compliance with a
numberless majority, convey and inveigh,
deceit and receipt, fancy and
phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the
primitive, as explain and explanation,
repeat and repetition.

[14] Some combinations of letters
having the same power are used indifferently without any
discoverable reason of choice, as in choak, choke;
soap, sope; fewel, fuel, and many others; which
I have sometimes inserted twice, that those who search for them
under either form, may not search in vain.

[15] In examining the orthography of
any doubtful word, the mode of spelling by which it is inserted
in the series of the dictionary, is to be considered as that to
which I give, perhaps not often rashly, the preference. I have
left, in the examples, to every authour his own practice
unmolested, that the reader may balance suffrages, and judge
between us: but this question is not always to be determined by
reputed or by real learning; some men, intent upon greater
things, have thought little on sounds and derivations; some,
knowing in the ancient tongues, have neglected those in which our
words are commonly to be sought. Thus Hammond writes
fecibleness for feasibleness, because I suppose
he imagined it derived immediately from the Latin; and
some words, such as dependant, dependent;
dependance, dependence, vary their final syllable, as
one or other language is present to the writer.

[16] In this part of the work, where
caprice has long wantoned without controul, and vanity sought
praise by petty reformation, I have endeavoured to proceed with a
scholar's reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian's regard to
the genius of our tongue. I have attempted few alterations, and
among those few, perhaps the greater part is from the modern to
the ancient practice; and I hope I may be allowed to recommend to
those, whose thoughts have been, perhaps, employed too anxiously
on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or
for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. It has
been asserted, that for the law to be known, is of more
importance than to be right. Change, says
Hooker, is not made without inconvenience, even from
worse to better. There is in constancy and stability a general
and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow
improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written
language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or
copy that which every variation of time or place makes different
from itself, and imitate those changes, which will again be
changed, while imitation is employed in observing them.

[17] This recommendation of
steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion, that
particular combinations of letters have much influence on human
happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes
of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in
lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of
earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is
only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of
ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to
decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which
they denote.

[18] In settling the orthography, I
have not wholly neglected the pronunciation, which I have
directed, by printing an accent upon the acute or elevated
syllable. It will sometimes be found, that the accent is placed
by the authour quoted, on a different syllable from that marked
in the alphabetical series; it is then to be understood, that
custom has varied, or that the authour has, in my opinion,
pronounced wrong. Short directions are sometimes given where the
sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted,
defect in such minute observations will be more easily excused,
than superfluity.

[19] In the investigation both of the
orthography and signification of words, their Etymology was necessarily to be considered, and
they were therefore to be divided into primitives and
derivatives. A primitive word, is that which can be traced no
further to any English root; thus circumspect,
circumvent, circumstance, delude,
concave, and complicate, though compounds in
the Latin, are to us primitives. Derivatives, are all
those that can be referred to any word in English of
greater simplicity.

[20] The derivatives I have referred
to their primitives, with an accuracy sometimes needless; for who
does not see that remoteness comes from remote,
lovely from love, concavity from
concave, and demonstrative from
demonstrate? but this grammatical exuberance the scheme
of my work did not allow me to repress. It is of great importance
in examining the general fabrick of a language, to trace one word
from another, by noting the usual modes of derivation and
inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical
works, though sometimes at the expence of particular
propriety.

[21] Among other derivatives I have
been careful to insert and elucidate the anomalous plurals of
nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the Teutonick
dialects are very frequent, and, though familiar to those who
have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of
our language.

[22] The two languages from which our
primitives have been derived are the Roman and
Teutonick: under the Roman I comprehend the
French and provincial tongues; and under the
Teutonick range the Saxon, German, and
all their kindred dialects. Most of our polysyllables are
Roman, and our words of one syllable are very often
Teutonick.

[23] In assigning the Roman
original, it has perhaps sometimes happened that I have mentioned
only the Latin, when the word was borrowed from the
French; and considering myself as employed only in the
illustration of my own language, I have not been very careful to
observe whether the Latin word be pure or barbarous, or
the French elegant or obsolete.

[24] For the Teutonick
etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius and
Skinner, the only names which I have forborn to quote
when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their
labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a
perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these,
whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to
instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have
excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude
of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all
the northern languages, Skinner probably examined the
ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into
dictionaries; but the learning of Junius is often of no
other use than to show him a track by which he may deviate from
his purpose, to which Skinner always presses forward by
the shortest way. Skinner is often ignorant, but never
ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge; but his
variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very
frequently disgraced by his absurdities.

[25] The votaries of the northern
muses will not perhaps easily restrain their indignation, when
they find the name of Junius thus degraded by a
disadvantageous comparison; but whatever reverence is due to his
diligence, or his attainments, it can be no criminal degree of
censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want of judgment,
who can seriously derive dream from drama,
because life is a drama, and a drama is a dream; and who
declares with a tone of defiance, that no man can fail to derive
moan from μονος,
monos, who considers that grief naturally loves to be
alone.

[26] Our knowledge of the northern
literature is so scanty, that of words undoubtedly
Teutonick the original is not always to be found in any
ancient language; and I have therefore inserted Dutch or
German substitutes, which I consider not as radical but
parallel, not as the parents, but sisters of the
English.

[27] The words which are represented
as thus related by descent or cognation, do not always agree in
sense; for it is incident to words, as to their authours, to
degenerate from their ancestors, and to change their manners when
they change their country. It is sufficient, in etymological
enquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may
easily pass into each other, or such as may both be referred to
one general idea.

[28] The etymology, so far as it is
yet known, was easily found in the volumes where it is
particularly and professedly delivered; and, by proper attention
to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted.
But to collect the Words of our language was a task of greater
difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately
apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must
be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and
gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in
the boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, however, has
been either skilful or lucky; for I have much augmented the
vocabulary.

[29] As my design was a dictionary,
common or appellative, I have omitted all words which have
relation to proper names; such as Arian,
Socinian, Calvinist, Benedictine,
Mahometan; but have retained those of a more general
nature, as Heathen, Pagan.

[30] Of the terms of art I have
received such as could be found either in books of science or
technical dictionaries; and have often inserted, from
philosophical writers, words which are supported perhaps only by
a single authority, and which being not admitted into general
use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and must depend for
their adoption on the suffrage of futurity.

[31] The words which our authours
have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or
ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance
with fashion, or lust of innovation, I have registred as they
occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others
against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the
injury of the natives.

[32] I have not rejected any by
design, merely because they were unnecessary or exuberant; but
have received those which by different writers have been
differently formed, as viscid, and viscidity,
viscous, and viscosity.

[33] Compounded or double words I
have seldom noted, except when they obtain a signification
different from that which the components have in their simple
state. Thus highwayman, woodman, and
horsecourser, require an explication; but of
thieflike or coachdriver no notice was needed,
because the primitives contain the meaning of the compounds.

[34] Words arbitrarily formed by a
constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in
ish, as greenish, bluish, adverbs in
ly, as dully, openly, substantives in
ness, as vileness, faultiness, were
less diligently sought, and many sometimes have been omitted,
when I had no authority that invited me to insert them; not that
they are not genuine and regular offsprings of English
roots, but because their relation to the primitive being always
the same, their signification cannot be mistaken.

[35] The verbal nouns in
ing, such as the keeping of the
castle, the leading of the army, are
always neglected, or placed only to illustrate the sense of the
verb, except when they signify things as well as actions, and
have therefore a plural number, as dwelling,
living; or have an absolute and abstract signification,
as
colouring, painting, learning.

[36] The participles are likewise
omitted, unless, by signifying rather qualities than action, they
take the nature of adjectives; as a thinking man, a man
of prudence; a pacing horse, a horse that can pace:
these I have ventured to call participial adjectives.
But neither are these always inserted, because they are commonly
to be understood, without any danger of mistake, by consulting
the verb.

[37] Obsolete words are admitted,
when they are found in authours not obsolete, or when they have
any force or beauty that may deserve revival.

[38] As composition is one of the
chief characteristicks of a language, I have endeavoured to make
some reparation for the universal negligence of my predecessors,
by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may be found
under after, fore, new,
night, fair, and many more. These, numerous as
they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity are
here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our
combination amply discovered.

[39] Of some forms of composition,
such as that by which re is prefixed to note
repetition, and un to signify
contrariety or privation, all the examples
cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles, if not
wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly
affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is imagined to
require them.

[40] There is another kind of
composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any
other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty.
We modify the signification of many verbs by a particle
subjoined; as to come off, to escape by a fetch; to
fall on, to attack; to fall off, to apostatize;
to break off, to stop abruptly; to bear out, to
justify; to fall in, to comply; to give over,
to cease; to set off, to embellish; to set in,
to begin a continual tenour; to set out, to begin a
course or journey; to take off, to copy; with
innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which some appear
wildly irregular, being so far distant from the sense of the
simple words, that no sagacity will be able to trace the steps by
which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with
great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the
collection is complete, I believe I have so far assisted the
students of our language, that this kind of phraseology will be
no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and
particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained by
comparison with those that may be found.

[41] Many words yet stand supported
only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth,
Philips, or the contracted Dict. for
Dictionaries subjoined: of these I am not always certain
that they are read in any book but the works of lexicographers.
Of such I have omitted many, because I had never read them; and
many I have inserted, because they may perhaps exist, though they
have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet considered
as resting only upon the credit of former dictionaries. Others,
which I considered as useful, or know to be proper, though I
could not at present support them by authorities, I have suffered
to stand upon my own attestation, claiming the same privilege
with my predecessors of being sometimes credited without
proof.

[42] The words, thus selected and
disposed, are grammatically considered: they are referred to the
different parts of speech; traced, when they are irregularly
inflected, through their various terminations; and illustrated by
observations, not indeed of great or striking importance,
separately considered, but necessary to the elucidation of our
language, and hitherto neglected or forgotten by English
grammarians.

[43] That part of my work on which I
expect malignity most frequently to fasten, is the
Explanation; in which I cannot hope to satisfy those,
who are perhaps not inclined to be pleased, since I have not
always been able to satisfy myself. To interpret a language by
itself is very difficult; many words cannot be explained by
synonimes, because the idea signified by them has not more than
one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot
be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion
unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words
by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will
be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless
lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and
distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much
known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of
terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such
terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by
supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof,
so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to
admit a definition.

[44] Other words there are, of which
the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a
paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians
termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered
to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse,
or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living
tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such
as no other form of expression can convey.

[45] My labour has likewise been much
increased by a class of verbs too frequent in the
English language, of which the signification is so loose
and general, the use so vague and indeterminate, and the senses
detorted so widely from the first idea, that it is hard to trace
them through the maze of variation, to catch them on the brink of
utter inanity, to circumscribe them by any limitations, or
interpret them by any words of distinct and settled meaning: such
are bear, break, come, cast,
fall, get, give, do,
put, set, go, run,
make, take, turn, throw. If
of these the whole power is not accurately delivered, it must be
remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable
by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are
hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained
in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can
be accurately delineated from its picture in the water.

[46] The particles are among all
nations applied with so great latitude, that they are not easily
reducible under any regular scheme of explication: this
difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater, in English,
than in other languages. I have laboured them with diligence, I
hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task,
which no man, however learned or sagacious, has yet been able to
perform.

[47] Some words there are which I
cannot explain, because I do not understand them; these might
have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but I
would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession:
for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether
lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral
song, or mourning garment; and Aristotle
doubts whether ουρευς,
in the Iliad, signifies a mule, or muleteer, I
may freely, without shame, leave some obscurities to happier
industry, or future information.

[48] The rigour of interpretative
lexicography requires that the explanation, and the word
explained, should be always reciprocal; this I have always
endeavoured, but could not always attain. Words are seldom
exactly synonimous; a new term was not introduced, but because
the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore, have often
many ideas, but few ideas have many names. It was then necessary
to use the proximate word, for the deficiency of single terms can
very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the
inconvenience great of such mutilated interpretations, because
the sense may easily be collected entire from the examples.

[49] In every word of extensive use,
it was requisite to mark the progress of its meaning, and show by
what gradations of intermediate sense it has passed from its
primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so that
every foregoing explanation should tend to that which follows,
and the series be regularly concatenated from the first notion to
the last.

[50] This is specious, but not always
practicable; kindred senses may be so interwoven, that the
perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor any reason be assigned why
one should be ranged before the other. When the radical idea
branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive
series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? The shades
of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other; so that
though on one side they apparently differ, yet it is impossible
to mark the point of contact. Ideas of the same race, though not
exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words
can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives
it, when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such
a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied, and
distinction puzzled, and perseverance herself hurries to an end,
by crouding together what she cannot separate.

[51] These complaints of difficulty
will, by those that have never considered words beyond their
popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man willing to
magnify his labours, and procure veneration to his studies by
involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure to those that
have not learned it: this uncertainty of terms, and commixture of
ideas, is well known to those who have joined philosophy with
grammar; and if I have not expressed them very clearly, it must
be remembered that I am speaking of that which words are
insufficient to explain.

[52] The original sense of words is
often driven out of use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet
must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination. Thus I
know not whether ardour is used for material
heat, or whether flagrant, in English,
ever signifies the same with burning; yet such are the
primitive ideas of these words, which are therefore set first,
though without examples, that the figurative senses may be
commodiously deduced.

[53] Such is the exuberance of
signification which many words have obtained, that it was
scarcely possible to collect all their senses; sometimes the
meaning of derivatives must be sought in the mother term, and
sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may be supplied
in the train of derivation. In any case of doubt or difficulty,
it will be always proper to examine all the words of the same
race; for some words are slightly passed over to avoid
repetition, some admitted easier and clearer explanation than
others, and all will be better understood, as they are considered
in greater variety of structures and relations.

[54] All the interpretations of words
are not written with the same skill, or the same happiness:
things equally easy in themselves, are not all equally easy to
any single mind. Every writer of a long work commits errours,
where there appears neither ambiguity to mislead, nor obscurity
to confound him; and in a search like this, many felicities of
expression will be casually overlooked, many convenient parallels
will be forgotten, and many particulars will admit improvement
from a mind utterly unequal to the whole performance.

[55] But many seeming faults are to
be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the
negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are
unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of
the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes
easier words are changed into harder, as burial into
sepulture or interment, drier into
desiccative, dryness into siccity or
aridity, fit into
paroxysm; for the easiest word, whatever it be, can
never be translated into one more easy. But easiness and
difficulty are merely relative, and if the present prevalence of
our language should invite foreigners to this dictionary, many
will be assisted by those words which now seem only to increase
or produce obscurity. For this reason I have endeavoured
frequently to join a Teutonick and Roman
interpretation, as to cheer to
gladden, or exhilarate, that every learner of
English may be assisted by his own tongue.

[56] The solution of all
difficulties, and the supply of all defects, must be sought in
the examples, subjoined to the various senses of each word, and
ranged according to the time of their authours.

[57] When first I collected these
authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful
to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore
extracted from philosophers principles of science; from
historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes;
from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful
descriptions. Such is design, while it is yet at a distance from
execution. When the time called upon me to range this
accumulation of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series,
I soon discovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away
the student, and was forced to depart from my scheme of including
all that was pleasing or useful in English literature,
and reduce my transcripts very often to clusters of words, in
which scarcely any meaning is retained; thus to the weariness of
copying, I was condemned to add the vexation of expunging. Some
passages I have yet spared, which may relieve the labour of
verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and flowers the
dusty desarts of barren philology.

[58] The examples, thus mutilated,
are no longer to be considered as conveying the sentiments or
doctrine of their authours; the word for the sake of which they
are inserted, with all its appendant clauses, has been carefully
preserved; but it may sometimes happen, by hasty detruncation,
that the general tendency of the sentence may be changed: the
divine may desert his tenets, or the philosopher his system.

[59] Some of the examples have been
taken from writers who were never mentioned as masters of
elegance or models of stile; but words must be sought where they
are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can terms of
manufacture or agriculture be found? Many quotations serve no
other purpose, than that of proving the bare existence of words,
and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness than those
which are to teach their structures and relations.

[60] My purpose was to admit no
testimony of living authours, that I might not be misled by
partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries might have reason
to complain; nor have I departed from this resolution, but when
some performance of uncommon excellence excited my veneration,
when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that
was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship,
solicited admission for a favourite name.

[61] So far have I been from any care
to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have studiously
endeavoured to collect examples and authorities from the writers
before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of
English undefiled, as the pure sources of genuine diction.
Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of
many causes, been gradually departing from its original
Teutonick character, and deviating towards a
Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought
to be our endeavour to recal it, by making our ancient volumes
the ground-work of stile, admitting among the additions of later
times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are
readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate
easily with our native idioms.

[62] But as every language has a time
of rudeness antecedent to perfection, as well as of false
refinement and declension, I have been cautious lest my zeal for
antiquity might drive me into times too remote, and croud my book
with words now no longer understood. I have fixed
Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which I make few
excursions. From the authours which rose in the time of
Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the
purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were
extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible;
the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases
of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect
of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney;
and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few
ideas would be lost to mankind, for want of English
words, in which they might be expressed.

[63] It is not sufficient that a word
is found, unless it be so combined as that its meaning is
apparently determined by the tract and tenour of the sentence;
such passages I have therefore chosen, and when it happened that
any authour gave a definition of a term, or such an explanation
as is equivalent to a definition, I have placed his authority as
a supplement to my own, without regard to the chronological
order, that is otherwise observed.

[64] Some words, indeed, stand
unsupported by any authority, but they are commonly derivative
nouns or adverbs, formed from their primitives by regular and
constant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring in books,
or words of which I have reason to doubt the existence.

[65] There is more danger of censure
from the multiplicity than paucity of examples; authorities will
sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use,
and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have
been omitted. But a work of this kind is not hastily to be
charged with superfluities: those quotations which to careless or
unskilful perusers appear only to repeat the same sense, will
often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner, diversities of
signification, or, at least, afford different shades of the same
meaning: one will shew the word applied to persons, another to
things; one will express an ill, another a good, and a third a
neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine from an
ancient authour; another will shew it elegant from a modern: a
doubtful authority is corroborated by another of more credit; an
ambiguous sentence is ascertained by a passage clear and
determinate; the word, how often soever repeated, appears with
new associates and in different combinations, and every quotation
contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the
language.

[66] When words are used equivocally,
I receive them in either sense; when they are metaphorical, I
adopt them in their primitive acceptation.

[67] I have sometimes, though rarely,
yielded to the temptation of exhibiting a genealogy of
sentiments, by shewing how one authour copied the thoughts and
diction of another: such quotations are indeed little more than
repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not gratify
the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history.

[68] The various syntactical
structures occurring in the examples have been carefully noted;
the licence or negligence with which many words have been
hitherto used, has made our stile capricious and indeterminate;
when the different combinations of the same word are exhibited
together, the preference is readily given to propriety, and I
have often endeavoured to direct the choice.

[69] Thus have I laboured to settle
the orthography, display the analogy, regulate the structures,
and ascertain the signification of English words, to
perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: but I have not
always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations.
The work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention it may
exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements: the orthography
which I recommend is still controvertible, the etymology which I
adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the
explanations are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too
much diffused, the significations are distinguished rather with
subtilty than skill, and the attention is harrassed with
unnecessary minuteness.

[70] The examples are too often
injudiciously truncated, and perhaps sometimes, I hope very
rarely, alleged in a mistaken sense; for in making this
collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state of disquiet
and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed to supply at
the review what was left incomplete in the first
transcription.

[71] Many terms appropriated to
particular occupations, though necessary and significant, are
undoubtedly omitted; and of the words most studiously considered
and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation.

[72] Yet these failures, however
frequent, may admit extenuation and apology. To have attempted
much is always laudable, even when the enterprize is above the
strength that undertakes it: To rest below his own aim is
incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are
comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because he
has done much, but because he can conceive little. When first I
engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor
things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the
hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the
obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and
ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into
those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with
which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had
thus enquired into the original of words, I resolved to show
likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into every
science, to enquire the nature of every substance of which I
inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition strictly
logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an
accurate description, that my book might be in place of all other
dictionaries whether appellative or technical. But these were the
dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon
found that it is too late to look for instruments, when the work
calls for execution, and that whatever abilities I had brought to
my task, with those I must finally perform it. To deliberate
whenever I doubted, to enquire whenever I was ignorant, would
have protracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps,
without much improvement; for I did not find by my first
experiments, that what I had not of my own was easily to be
obtained: I saw that one enquiry only gave occasion to another,
that book referred to book, that to search was not always to
find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to
persue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to
chace the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he
seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from
them.

[73] I then contracted my design,
determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit
auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance than assistance: by
this I obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to my
work, which would in time be finished, though not completed.

[74] Despondency has never so far
prevailed as to depress me to negligence; some faults will at
last appear to be the effects of anxious diligence and
persevering activity. The nice and subtle ramifications of
meaning were not easily avoided by a mind intent upon accuracy,
and convinced of the necessity of disentangling combinations, and
separating similitudes. Many of the distinctions which to common
readers appear useless and idle, will be found real and important
by men versed in the school philosophy, without which no
dictionary ever shall be accurately compiled, or skilfully
examined.

[75] Some senses however there are,
which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they
are often confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore
cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might
be indifferently put to either signification: this uncertainty is
not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the
language; who do not teach men how they should think, but relate
how they have hitherto expressed their thoughts.

[76] The imperfect sense of some
examples I lamented, but could not remedy, and hope they will be
compensated by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and
preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of
imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom.

[77] The orthography and etymology,
though imperfect, are not imperfect for want of care, but because
care will not always be successful, and recollection or
information come too late for use.

[78] That many terms of art and
manufacture are omitted, must be frankly acknowledged; but for
this defect I may boldly allege that it was unavoidable: I could
not visit caverns to learn the miner's language, nor take a
voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor
visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to
gain the names of wares, tools and operations, of which no
mention is found in books; what favourable accident, or easy
enquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but it
had been a hopeless labour to glean up words, by courting living
information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the
roughness of another.

[79] To furnish the academicians
della Crusca with words of this kind, a series of
comedies called la Fiera, or the Fair, was
professedly written by Buonaroti; but I had no such
assistant, and therefore was content to want what they must have
wanted likewise, had they not luckily been so supplied.

[80] Nor are all words which are not
found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the
laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a
great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed
for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at
certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This
fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay,
cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a
language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other
things unworthy of preservation.

[81] Care will sometimes betray to
the appearance of negligence. He that is catching opportunities
which seldom occur, will suffer those to pass by unreguarded,
which he expects hourly to return; he that is searching for rare
and remote things, will neglect those that are obvious and
familiar: thus many of the most common and cursory words have
been inserted with little illustration, because in gathering the
authorities, I forbore to copy those which I thought likely to
occur whenever they were wanted. It is remarkable that, in
reviewing my collection, I found the word Sea unexemplified.

[82] Thus it happens, that in things
difficult there is danger from ignorance, and in things easy from
confidence; the mind, afraid of greatness, and disdainful of
littleness, hastily withdraws herself from painful searches, and
passes with scornful rapidity over tasks not adequate to her
powers, sometimes too secure for caution, and again too anxious
for vigorous effort; sometimes idle in a plain path, and
sometimes distracted in labyrinths, and dissipated by different
intentions.

[83] A large work is difficult
because it is large, even though all its parts might singly be
performed with facility; where there are many things to be done,
each must be allowed its share of time and labour, in the
proportion only which it bears to the whole; nor can it be
expected, that the stones which form the dome of a temple, should
be squared and polished like the diamond of a ring.

[84] Of the event of this work, for
which, having laboured it with so much application, I cannot but
have some degree of parental fondness, it is natural to form
conjectures. Those who have been persuaded to think well of my
design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop
to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been
suffered to make in it without opposition. With this consequence
I will confess that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin
to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor
experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a
certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh
at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years;
and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who
being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved
their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his
dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption
and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or
clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.

[85] With this hope, however,
academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their
languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their
vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too
volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables,
and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride,
unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The
French language has visibly changed under the inspection
of the academy; the stile of Amelot's translation of
father Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be
un peu passè; and no Italian will
maintain, that the diction of any modern writer is not
perceptibly different from that of Boccace,
Machiavel, or Caro.

[86] Total and sudden transformations
of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now
very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though
slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are
perhaps as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions
of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce, however
necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners,
corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with
strangers, to whom they endeavour to accommodate themselves, must
in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the
traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian
coasts. This will not always be confined to the exchange, the
warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to
other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with the
current speech.

[87] There are likewise internal
causes equally forcible. The language most likely to continue
long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a
little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from
strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of
life; either without books, or, like some of the
Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and
unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would
perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same
signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished
by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the
community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the
other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be
enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge,
whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations
of words. When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will
range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields
of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused,
the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion
grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as
it alters practice.

[88] As by the cultivation of various
sciences, a language is amplified, it will be more furnished with
words deflected from their original sense; the geometrician will
talk of a courtier's zenith, or the excentrick virtue of a wild
hero, and the physician of sanguine expectations and phlegmatick
delays. Copiousness of speech will give opportunities to
capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and
others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of
new, or extend the signification of known terms. The tropes of
poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will
become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity
or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue;
illiterate writers will at one time or other, by publick
infatuation, rise into renown, who, not knowing the original
import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness,
confound distinction, and forget propriety. As politeness
increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and
vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for
the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, which must,
for the same reasons, be in time dismissed. Swift, in
his petty treatise on the English language, allows that
new words must sometimes be introduced, but proposes that none
should be suffered to become obsolete. But what makes a word
obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how
shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or
recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once by
disuse become unfamiliar, and by unfamiliarity unpleasing.

[89] There is another cause of
alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the
present state of the world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two
languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will
always be mixed, where the chief part of education, and the most
conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign
tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find
its words and combinations croud upon his memory; and haste or
negligence, refinement or affectation, will obtrude borrowed
terms and exotick expressions.

[90] The great pest of speech is
frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one
language into another, without imparting something of its native
idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation;
single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the
tongue continue the same, but new phraseology changes much at
once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the
order of the columns. If an academy should be established for the
cultivation of our stile, which I, who can never wish to see
dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English
liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling
grammars and dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence,
to stop the licence of translatours, whose idleness and
ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble
a dialect of France.

[91] If the changes that we fear be
thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as
in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? it remains
that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we
cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot
be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural
tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our
constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.

[92] In hope of giving longevity to
that which its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have devoted
this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that
we may no longer yield the palm of philology to the nations of
the continent. The chief glory of every people arises from its
authours: whether I shall add any thing by my own writings to the
reputation of English literature, must be left to time:
much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease;
much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in
provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not
think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance
foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators
of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours
afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to
Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to
Boyle.

[93] When I am animated by this wish,
I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver
it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured
well. That it will immediately become popular I have not promised
to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from
which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time
furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt;
but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be
wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no
dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it
is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some
falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and
etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient;
that he, whose design includes whatever language can express,
must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer
will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes
faint with weariness under a task, which Scaliger
compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is
obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always
present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprize
vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual
eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer
shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for
that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which
will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.

[94] In this work, when it shall be
found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much
likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of
tenderness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to
know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet
it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English
Dictionary was written with little assistance of the
learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft
obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick
bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and
in sorrow: and it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism
to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I
have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have
hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now
immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after
the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the
aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the
Italian academicians, did not secure them from the
censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of
France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work,
were obliged to change its oeconomy, and give their second
edition another form, I may surely be contented without the
praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of
solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till
most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave,
and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss
it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from
censure or from praise.